Speaker 1: I like always physics, mathematics, chemistry when I was in the secondary school. I probably was good on those subjects and therefore it was the normal way to study a technical secondary school back in Argentina. And then I entered engineering. Basically, material sciences came a little bit later in my career when I wanted to discover why materials behave the way they behave based on their atomistic structure, microstructure and what is the link between the two aspects, the structure of the material and the properties for the given applications. Therefore I entered the field of material science and engineering. The subject itself, I could think, came from my own interest, my own personal interest, I would say, and how I think it was also easier than other subjects. But the plan came later on when you realise that you want to become a researcher in a university environment. Then you have to start planning from your PhD, your post-doc and indeed in your earlier stages in your career. But the subject itself, you don't plan to be a material scientist. It evolves from your own interest and where you feel comfortable and you are identifying yourself with this subject, basically. At the time we were increasingly working in the area of electric field assisted processing of materials, short electrophoretic deposition. And I think we made a substantial contribution to the field. At the time I was at the Imperial College in London where my group was one of the first to develop techniques based on this electrophoretic deposition method for manipulating nanoparticles, including carbon nanotubes and related nanomaterials. Those outputs led to these recognitions and these prizes, these awards. Well, I discovered at the time, about 10 years ago, that electrophoretic deposition would be a very powerful technique for nanomaterials, for nanotechnology. At the time there was still not a very clear link between nanotechnology and this particular technique for developing new materials. And therefore I proposed this topic to the community and it was accepted. And immediately I became the organizer of the first conference and hence the chair and the founder of this series. Because after the first conference it was said, it would be nice to have a second conference. And who would be the leader? And I said, well, I can be the leader because it was my idea at the end. And therefore perhaps being the chairman of a conference puts you in a position of responsibility because you have to see how the field is evolving and who are the players, the key players in the field, those who have been there for some years and those who are new coming, because there is always the idea that more and more people are involved in a given scientific subject. And so as a chairman this is the responsibility of identifying where is the area, how is the area evolving, who are the key players. And at the first time you have to keep, of course, the interest in the field. You have to check what are the publications, the key publications, so you can invite those key authors to come to the conference to give the plenary talks or keynote speakers. So as a chairman you want to keep this conference series alive. Your responsibility is to be very well updated of what is going on in the field and who are the key players who will attract other scientists to come to this conference because you have four or five key speakers that you have invited to attend basically. One fundamental skill that as a young researcher you should develop is to be able to network, to create networks, to build and to maintain networks, which in our case in scientific community means collaborators. At the end of the day we are not doing business, this is really a network of collaborators, a network of colleagues, a network of other scientists who share your interest in a particular subject. I write, I talk and I think in English. I think after so many years, despite the fact that I now live in Germany and my roots are in a Spanish speaking country, however for establishing links with other communities, with other professors, with other colleagues, then indeed if you speak their language it facilitates enormously the interaction. I mean we all know English is the lingua franca for science and technology, no question about that, but it helps if you want to, especially to broaden your contacts, to know the language of the collaborators or your partners in particular projects because this helps, what we have been discussing earlier, expanding your network of collaborators. I mean the language skills are very, very important in my opinion. And here it's interesting that the young scientists recognise that in this very interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary science state we are in at the moment, you have to be both a specialist, because you have to be very good at what you are, your PhD will be your seal for the future and you have to identify yourself with your PhD, you have to like your PhD, you have to take ownership of the topic that you carried out in your PhD. But at the same time you have to be more generalist and you have to be able to link different subjects in order to develop new ideas and new research areas. Research areas are usually evolved by connecting two or more disciplines and as a young scientist very early you have to be able to think outside the box, so be able to think interdisciplinary, not just on the specific subject of your PhD. So, and this is a difficult balance of course, you have to be very good in your subject, but you also have to be a generalist, I would say, in order to link different subjects. And here it is not only about starting a collaboration, it is also maintaining these links of your collaborators or your network, which means, of course, be able to share your views. I mean, I read a statement that said you have to be prepared to give as much as you take, so be generous in sharing your ideas to maintain this strong link of collaborators and your network, that can be, of course, in your benefit and in the future for your career maybe play an important role. Also, dare to propose topics for research. Also, when you are talking with colleagues or other young scientists or other professors who are not necessarily working in your field, but if you connect two different areas, you should be able to, even if you are very young and you may not have still many years of research, you should be able, you should propose, you should dare to propose new topics, new areas, because I think this is the most exciting area apart of doing science, is to come with new ideas linking different research subjects. First of all, disclosure of their own ideas to a broader community, because obviously if you are networking with a number of colleagues or other professors, other students, then automatically your ideas will be received by more people and certainly your ideas will be either replicated, other people will want to repeat what you did and probably will improve your original idea, but you are automatically being immersed in a very proactive and a very positive environment where your ideas are being discussed and you can obviously discuss the ideas of the others, so it's a kind of, as I said before, give and take. So probably this is very important, obviously from the very simple, beneficial, cost-benefit aspect, you know more people and these people may become the next supervisor of your next project, they may become your next employer, by the way, if via this networking you get in touch with some professor or some other head of laboratory, etc., who wants to know you better and ask you to send the CV. So networking is also, not only, I have to say, not only, but also a way of choosing your next career path, when some of these other members of the network become very interested and you can develop a good relationship with them. So other aspect, indeed, is to be able to discuss in a free, challenging, but free environment with other colleagues, and in this case, other young researchers, about your news, I mean, your results, your new ideas, and to receive also feedback, and this is another very important aspect. Well, first of all, I mean, when you go to a conference and you are a young researcher, you should prepare well, you have to know the program, you have to know who is presenting what, obviously, because then you know in which room, in which lecture room will be that particular scientist, you will listen to his presentation or to her presentation, and then at the end you can ask the right question to him, and you want to approach him, for example, to discuss your own project. And usually, well, I would say in 99.999% of the cases, a professor or a scientist who gave a talk is very, very happy if a young scientist comes, perhaps from another part of the world, to ask him a question or to propose him a new topic or to discuss a paper he published two years ago or whatever. So this is how networking starts, really contacting the person who you feel is relevant for what you are doing specifically. But in order to do so, you have to be, as you said, very nicely said, you have to be well prepared, in the sense that you know who is talking and who is talking about what. So this is an important aspect of going to a conference. Obviously, use all the opportunities available, the coffee breaks, the lunches, to just talk with people, also sometimes even randomly. And in many cases, in this way, develop a very interesting conversation, and it happens that you have more in common than you feel, and you end up having a potential exchange of emails afterwards, and probably you visit each other afterwards. So collaborations and even indeed friendships start at the coffee breaks in conferences. For that, probably you don't need a big preparation from the technical point of view. What you need is a preparation to be open and to be willing to engage and start conversation and to be open, discussing your results and trying to get information of what others are doing. I mean, this is the nice aspect of science and technology and going to international conferences, where you are free to discuss results and to meet people who share your interests, your knowledge, although they are in the other part of the world. Very recently, I was at a conference, I will not say where and what conference, but I was really surprised that there were always three or four people, senior people, asking questions, although in the audience we have many, many young scientists. And the topics were excellent, very well presented and very challenging, very nice. And I was surprised that there was very little response from the younger members of the audience. So this is wrong. You need to ask questions in the plenary when everyone is sitting there, because you also in this way are somehow presenting yourself. And the questions, there are no bad questions, there are no silly questions. All the questions are relevant and no professor or speaker will ever consider any question coming to the audience a bad question. So they are to ask questions, they are to challenge whatever has been said or has been discussed. And yes, so that's one thing that if you ask me what you shouldn't do in a conference is to be passive and to go in your corner. Don't go always with your mates, because obviously sometimes going to a conference means going to your own group. You go with your own professor and four or five of your mates at URC anyway every day in the lab. So you don't do that. You have to go and know and meet new people. And this is the whole idea of interacting and building, as we were saying before, building your network of collaborators and why not friends after that. You can start contacts, start relationships, but you have to maintain them in order to build your network. And this means use email. I think this is a powerful tool that we have. Certainly when I started my career there was no email. If you wanted to collaborate with someone you would pick up the phone, which obviously was sometimes very expensive. You want to go from one continent to the other one, so you would just send a letter. And it would take ten days to go there and ten days to come, etc. So now the email is a fantastic tool. Use the email, but not only to write emails, also answer the emails as soon as you can. So you do need really to be very active in answering and be positive about building this collaboration. Sometimes when you send an email and after three days there is no answer, and I know positively that this person is an active researcher, I wonder, well, he or she may not be interested in answering me. He is ignoring me, so I'm not happy with that. And this is what I tell to all my students also. When I send them an email, they have to answer me within 24 hours, unless there is a weekend, then it's 48 hours, but no more. Because I expect them obviously to be active checking emails and being active interacting with, well, in this case with me and with the group in the laboratory, but also as you are building a network, it's key to keep this communication fluid and very active and very efficient. So you have to work hard for keeping your network. And one easy way to do so is just to be active answering your emails. This is very important. I would recommend from the start that at your PhD level already you choose which is the society, which is the professional body that best represents your interests, and this is obviously the second step after you have sort of identified yourself with your PhD. So you have to like your PhD project. You have to take ownership. Years after you finish your PhD, you will be able to say, I did that in my PhD, or I published that as a result of my PhD. And this is very powerful. This is very important because this represents that you are an expert in that particular field. So once you have done that, then you have to obviously look to who are related in the particular topic of your PhD, which most cases will be members of a professional body or a society. So already at PhD level, you have to choose the society. If there's more than one, it's better. And here is always this duality that we discussed at the beginning. On one hand, you need the specificity. You have to be a specialist in one area. So if I do material science, it's obvious I will be a member of the German Material Society. I am now in Germany. On the other hand, also, as we said before, you have to see what are the fields connected to, for example, material science, which are making your research interesting. And most cases, there will be societies or group of people or professional bodies which are not related necessarily to material science, especially if your project is interdisciplinary. You also have to go and join their meetings, probably not necessarily becoming a member immediately, but going also, for example, to meetings and conferences which are highly interdisciplinary, where you can discover these different aspects that can lead to a new project, to a new idea. So, yes, being a member of a technical society is very, very important. I would encourage young scientists to do it very early in their career and to keep the membership and to become active. You can become active in the group of young members of the society. And later on, of course, you can be asked to co-organize a meeting or be a session chair in one of their conferences. And all this helps this network building strategy, which we were talking earlier. Yes, I think you have two types of conferences, very clear. Those big conferences where you have a thousand people or even more, where you do not get all the technical information that you would like, because there are so many parallel sessions and you miss some lectures. But there, you almost meet everyone you want to meet, because these are big, major conferences where everyone who is working in a particular field will go. Say, Euromat is a typical one in material science in Europe, for example. And it's good to go to those conferences, definitely. But it's also good to go to the smaller conferences. I'm not saying nothing very clever, but obviously you need to go to the smaller conferences, which are usually only 80, 90 people, all locked in one room. There are no parallel sessions, plenty of time for discussions. And these are conferences where the opportunities to, well, first of all, to learn from other scientists and also to get feedback from your work from other scientists, because there is plenty of time after the specific session to go for a coffee and to talk, because there is a lot of free time until the next session. It would be a typical small conference. Then, indeed, I would recommend them as well. So, basically, as always, you have to do both. And this is related to what probably I was trying to say before. You have to work hard, right? So you have to work hard in science to establish your career and to establish your network and going to conferences, which is a nice thing to do, of course, especially when you are not very much, and I have to say, related to family constraints. Then do it. When you are young and you are sort of free and you don't have a big family or even children, you have to take the opportunity to travel, to explore, visit to other laboratories, to go to conferences. This is very nice and an intrinsic part of being a researcher. Later on, you will have more responsibilities. You will have to teach courses where you cannot go anytime you want abroad, because you have, obviously, teaching responsibilities. You have administrative responsibilities when you become head of a laboratory or head of institute at the university. And also you have your family that you want to spend time with. You cannot travel every two weeks to a conference. So then the time to go to conference and to build, exactly, to build your network of collaborators and people who know you and who appreciate you, to build this idea of being part of this community where you are appreciated, you are known, and you are also able to receive input from your peers, happens really at the, well, early stages, from mid-time through your PhD to, say, your first or second postdoc. After that, you have to still go to conference, but it becomes more difficult. I think, basically, there are a few characteristics, I would say, that I think a successful scientist should have. And I try to see this in my young students. And when they feel that they are lacking some of this aspect, I tell them they should have to work a little bit on that. I think communication skills are very important. We assume, of course, that you have to be good in your subject, you have to work hard, you have to read papers, read papers, read books, and read again, right? This is very important. And you have to develop, as I said, a broad knowledge in your area. But beyond that, what other so-called soft skills are required? Communication skills are very, very important for all that has been discussed in terms of building your network. This is fundamentally important, from writing to oral communication skills. And I think the other thing is to be able to be approachable and dare to approach people. So I think this is another aspect which sometimes is probably not considered as being highly important, specifically in physical sciences or engineering, whereas it's also most important in social sciences. I think in our field, also, it's very important to be able to, when you have the communication skills, to use them, to engage with your peers and also, indeed, with people or professors and other researchers who may be more experienced than you. Materials Letters is a very nice journal. I identify myself very much with the journal. I was very happy when I was invited to become the editor-in-chief two years ago. The journal published short papers, letters, of cutting-edge research, in particular a novel aspect of materials science and engineering on a very broad basis. So we publish topics from polymers to ceramics to metals to composite materials, nanomaterials, and for applications ranging from energy materials to electronics to biomedical applications. So it's very broad and therefore challenging, of course, because we receive many papers and we have to make a very good selection so that only, obviously, the excellent papers get published. At the moment, I see topics in my own field of interest, which are biomaterials, increasing, particularly in the area of biodegradable systems, being polymers or metals even, or bioactive glasses, for applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. So this is an area which I see improving or increasing because there is no other sort of letter-type journal publishing biomaterials in the field, so we can sort of collect those short papers of advance in that field. But indeed, on the other side, there is increasing work also on submissions in the field of functional materials, luminescent type of materials, materials for energy, plastic electronics. So I cannot mention one field in which we are publishing more because we get from these different fields very good papers and indeed the challenge, as I said before, is to identify those topics which are highly relevant for the material science community in general and not just for a very specific group, because in this case, the author should send the papers, of course, to a specific journal publishing on that particular topic. So materials letters we publish in general in the different aspects of materials science and engineering in a very broad basis. Thank you.